English Fairy Talespay you well.’” So he agreed, and served the carpenter for a
year and a day. “Now,” said the master, “I will give you your
wage;” and he presented him with a table, telling him he
had but to say, “Table, be covered,” and at once it would be
spread with lots to eat and drink.
Jack hitched the table on his back, and away he went with
it till he came to the inn. “Well, host,” shouted he, “my
dinner to-day, and that of the best.”
“Very sorry, but there is nothing in the house but ham and
eggs.”
“Ham and eggs for me!” exclaimed Jack. “I can do better
than that.—Come, my table, be covered!”
At once the table was spread with turkey and sausages,
roast mutton, potatoes, and greens. The publican opened
his eyes, but he said nothing, not he.
That night he fetched down from his attic a table very like
that of Jack, and exchanged the two. Jack, none the wiser,
next morning hitched the worthless table on to his back and
carried it home. “Now, father, may I marry my lass?” he
asked.
“Not unless you can keep her,” replied the father. “Look
here!” exclaimed Jack. “Father, I have a table which does all
my bidding.”
“Let me see it,” said the old man.
The lad set it in the middle of the room, and bade it be
covered; but all in vain, the table remained bare. In a rage,
the father caught the warming-pan down from the wall and
warmed his son’s back with it so that the boy fled howling
from the house, and ran and ran till he came to a river and
tumbled in. A man picked him out and bade him assist him
in making a bridge over the river; and how do you think he
was doing it? Why, by casting a tree across; so Jack climbed
up to the top of the tree and threw his weight on it, so that
when the man had rooted the tree up, Jack and the tree-
head dropped on the farther bank.
“Thank you,” said the man; “and now for what you have
done I will pay you;” so saying, he tore a branch from the
tree, and fettled it up into a club with his knife. “There,”
exclaimed he; “take this stick, and when you say to it, ‘Up
stick and bang him,’ it will knock any one down who angers
you.”
The lad was overjoyed to get this stick—so away he went